Wood tenderizing is well known and consists generally of making incisions in wood lumber or veneer for the purpose of improving the drying rate in green lumber, improving the treatability of the wood and in the case of veneer providing uniform strength characteristics which result in reduced buckling and splitting and improved handling on automatic lay-up lines. For various examples of methods and apparatuses for tenderizing veneer, reference may be had to the following: U.S. Pat. Nos.:
U.S. Pat. No. 4,219,060, issued Aug. 26, 1980 to Katsuji Hasegawa;
U.S. Pat. No. 3,678,974, issued July 25, 1972 to J. C. O'Brian;
U.S. Pat. No. 4,486,963, issued Dec. 11, 1984 to Masaru Koike et al;
U.S. Pat. No. 4,473,099, issued Sept. 25, 1984 to Masaru Koike et al;
U.S. Pat. No. 4,469,154, issued Sept. 4, 1984 to Masaru Koike et al;
U.S. Pat. No. 4,442,876, issued Apr. 17, 1984 to Masaru Koike et et al;
U.S. Pat. No. 4,318,433, issued Mar. 9, 1982 to Ralph D. Amundsen; and
U.S. Pat. No. 4,137,956, issued Feb. 6, 1979 to Lloyd Foberg.
While a number of methods and apparatuses are currently used for incising most all, to applicant's knowledge, employ a plurality of incising teeth that are fixed to rollers or platens. As a typical example of separately attached incising teeth attention is directed to the aforementioned U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,318,433 and 4,137,956.
There are a number of drawbacks and limitations to currently available incisors and that is they have a high initial captial cost and also relatively high maintenance costs. The high capital cost comes from manufacturing difficulties of fixing a large number of incising teeth to a backing of some nature with extremely high tolerances. The close or high tolerances are required if there is to be accomplished any semblance of a close and consistent pattern to achieve the desired effect. High maintenance costs are encountered because as the teeth become dull they must be sharpened from time to time or replaced and both represent sizable problems.
Important considerations in the design of an incisor are the geometry of the incising teeth and the frequency and pattern of incisions produced by the incisor.
One object of the present invention is to provide an incising roller that is relatively inexpensive and simple to manufacture and one which can be readily produced and reproduced consistently in a variety of different patterns.
Another object of the present invention is to provide an incising roller that may be formed in a number of different patterns each of which is intended to give particular desired results dependent upon the type and characteristics of the material or veneer to be incised and/or characteristics desired for the incised material.
Another object of the invention is to provide an incising roller wherein the incising teeth are integrally formed with the roll.
Another object of the present invention is to provide an incising apparatus for veneer wherein there is at least one incising roller having a large number of incising teeth formed integrally with the roller.
While incising of veneer can be a single step as in single line operation independent of other processing operations, another object of the present invention is to combine the incising operation with other operations. For example a combined operation can be forming the veneer using a lathe and incising it at the same time and if desired additional means can be provided for controlling the thickness of the veneer. An incising and drying operation is yet another intended combined operation.